Allan Millett is one
of our nations finest military historians, and I have been pleased to assign his
work to students at the Air War College. His review of my latest book (Making War,
Thinking History: Munich, Vietnam, and Presidential Uses of Force from Korea to Kosovo,
reviewed in Parameters, Winter 2002-2003)
mystifies me. The foundation of his critique seems to be that, alas, I am not a
professional historian but rather a defense policy guru, and that, by virtue
of this unpardonable defect, I cannot credibly write about presidential reasoning and
mis-reasoning by historical analogy when it comes to using or not using military force.

This judgment is
shared by neither the several professional historians and others to whom I vetted the book
manuscript before publication nor those who have reviewed it after publication. George C.
Herring, the dean of American historians of the Vietnam War, calls it a splendid
up-to-date analysis of the ways history is usedand misused by policy makers in
reaching crucial decisions to employ military force. He adds that it should be
required reading for those who seek to understand the value and limitations of historical
analogy as a tool of decision-making. Military historian Thomas Alexander Hughes
says the book effectively blends a policy makers ear with a scholars eye
in a serious attempt to teach about the promise and problem of historical analogy in
decision-making. American foreign policy historian Warren I. Cohen, in the Los
Angeles Times, calls the book superb and believes that President Bush
would be well advised to read [it] before he takes the country into war with
Iraq.

The scholarly
journal Choice declares: No other published work provides this kind of
synthesis of the impact of the past on the present. Military strategist Eliot A.
Cohen, who reviewed the book for Foreign Affairs, believes it reveals just
how shallow an understanding most [US political leaders] had, and that the
books central point that wars must be understood on their own terms,
even though a broad knowledge of history is vital to the creation of policy
judgmentsis eminently sensible and clearly put.

Milletts
judgment that Records effort to grasp the issue of policy-by-historical
analogy is well-intentioned and worth reading . . . even if he produces no convincing
evidence that either the problem or the solution really exists is no less puzzling.
Why would one wish to waste time writing or reading a book that examines a nonexistent
problem? I agree with Millett that most American Presidents are not well-educated in the
humanities and social sciences. Yet, as my book documents profusely, they nonetheless do
reason by historical analogy as a means of interpreting new events; historical illiteracy
has never stopped Presidents from engaging in such reasoning, however poorly they do it.

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Moreover, the fact
that many Presidents have publicly employed historical analogies to garner public support
for a use-of-force decision does not mean they themselves did not believe in them. Harry
Truman decided to fight in Korea for several reasons, but it is preposterous to suggest,
as does Millett, that the influence of the Munich analogy was not one of them. To be sure,
Truman used the analogy for policy purposes. However, the evidence is overwhelming that he
and other key policymakers, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Assistant Secretary of
State Dean Rusk among them, genuinely believed the Soviet-sponsored North Korean attack on
South Korea in June 1950 represented a challenge analogous to that posed by Hitler to the
Western democracies in the 1930s, and that US inaction would invite further communist
aggression. Whether or not Truman needed Munich in 1950, he nonetheless
believed in the analogys validity.

The Munich
analogys powerful influence on subsequent disastrous American decisionmaking on
Vietnam is also incontrovertibleas my book documents in
detail via decisionmakers public and private remarks during and after. As Bernard
Brodie noted in his War and Politics, People who do not remember the events
leading up to World War II find it difficult to recapture the tremendously traumatic
impact of the Munich Agreement on the thinking of the postwar world, especially in the
United States.

No less undeniable
has been the influence of the Vietnam analogy on post-Vietnam use-of-force decisionmaking.
The Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, which
encouraged a premature US cessation of hostilities against Iraq in 1991 and crippled
American responses to almost a decade of Serbian atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, is
the professional militarys distillation of the lessons of Vietnam. Those
lessons, seemingly revalidated in Beirut and Mogadishu, exerted a chilling effect on
American statecraft for three decades. In fact, there never was another Vietnam lying in
wait for the United States in either Iraq or the Balkans.

Thus the problem of
presidential mis-reasoning by historical analogy exists. As for the solution to
this problem, I offered none because I do not believe there is one. Constitutional
eligibility for the presidency doesnt include the ability to read and write, much
less possession of a Ph.D. in history. I have no objection to Milletts proposed
placement of a professional historian in the White House or on the National Security
Council staff. But even we non-historians know that history is pretty much what historians
say it is, and that historians disagree more often than they agree. An exception is the
public commentary of professional historians on Making War, Thinking History,
whereso farMillett finds himself a minority of one.

Jeffrey Record
Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

The Reviewer
Replies:

Professor
Records dismay at my review of his Making War, Thinking History is
understandable, and I am comfortable at being a minority of one among his reviewers.

My central point is
that Record has not yet produced convincing evidence (nor has anyone else) that historical
analogies have done much to shape presidential war-peace decisionmaking. Moral
assumptions, maybe. A personal sense of political betrayal, maybe. Bureaucratic politics,
probably. Economic impact, probably. Electoral

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politics and public
opinion polls and media approval, almost certainly. Conceptions of national security and
interest, almost certainly. Historical analogies most often appear in post-decision
memoirs and contemporary speeches, but in innermost thoughts? Who knows? I have lived with
Harry S. Truman and the Korean intervention decision for a decade, and Munich was not a
major factor at the time. In fact, Truman thought very little about Korea at all,
1945-1950, until Dean Achesons fateful call. Fortunately for the South Koreans, the
State Department had.

A more powerful
caseas Record himself inadvertently revealsis that organizations have
institutional memories that may be analogy-based and transmitted or carried by individuals
who have long institutional associations like admirals and generals. No 20th-century
President fits this description except Dwight D. Eisenhower. I would argue that
Presidents, journalists, and defense analysts are the last anarchists when organizational
loyalty is at issue.

Now historians and
political scientists love to think that great ideas, even historical analogies, shape
events, since ideas are their business. As Professor Record surely knows, historical
analogies may help sell policies, provided the analogy-user and the audience agree upon
what the analogy means. Perhaps that is the question when one invokes Munich
and Vietnam.

Professor Record
betrays his own a-historical bent (history is whatever happened that makes my
case) when he says that history is pretty much what historians say it
is, which most certainly it is not. What history means, or what causes change
and continuity over time, may be at issue, but there are canons of evidence, context, and
causality that may not be scientific or objective in the Rankian
sense, but are still observed by most professional historians. Personally, I would
prefer Presidents who would deal with historical issues related to a policy problem in a
systematic, staff-oriented way, not as an exercise in self-deception or group-think.
Fortunately, presidential decisionmaking doesnt appear to me to be history-driven
one way or another.

The study of
presidential decisionmaking, however, is certainly worthwhile, so perhaps Professor
Records book has some small utility, even if Bernard Brodie, Richard Neustadt, and
Ernest May remain better guides.

Allan R. Millett

THE MILITARY, THE
MEDIA, AND DECEPTION

To the Editor:

In her article,
The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational
Risk? (Parameters, Autumn 2002), Lieutenant Colonel Margaret H. Belknap
proposes that the news media be enlisted to execute effective psychological
operations (PSYOPS) [and] to play a major role in deception of the enemy. She
immediately recognizes that her proposal may be anathema to the press and
there may be instances where the media would rebel at any involvement.

That is understating
the case. This proposal should be resolutely resisted by the entire Department of Defense
and particularly by the nations uniformed leaders, for two reasons. Using the press
to deceive an enemy with misinformation and disinformation also means deceiving the
American people that soldiers have sworn, at the

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risk of their lives,
to defend. Lying to the press is not so important in itself but lying through the press to
the citizens is the surest way to destroy the already fragile trust the people have in
their government. Further, in this age of nearly pervasive and almost instantaneous
communications, lying to the press means lying to your own soldiers, to the Congress that
controls the military budget, and to Americas allies and friends around the world.
Of the myriad lessons to come out of the agonizing experience of Vietnam, surely the
consequences of lying to the press and people should be close to the top of the list.

Second, the liars
are almost certainly going to be caught and exposed. And when the liars are discovered,
their credibility and capacity to lead will be destroyed. Maybe not right away and maybe
not for weeks or even months. But in our open society, sooner or later the lies will come
out. On a grand scale, witness the lies in the Pentagon Papers; the lies of President
Johnson, who was in effect forced to abdicate; the lies of President Nixon, who was forced
to resign; or the lies of President Clinton, who was impeached but survived in office. Any
self-respecting correspondent who discovers that he or she has been used to deceive the
enemy and therefore the readers of his publication or viewers of his TV broadcast will do
his level best to blow the liar out of the water.

It is for these
reasons that the noticeable trend in the military services to lump together information
operations, psychological warfare, and public affairs should be stopped in its tracks, for
sound practical if not idealistic reasons. Colonel Belknap is clearly on solid ground in
suggesting that the military use the media as a conduit to accurately and honestly
convey information to the American people about the operations in which their military is
engaged. That is the responsibility of public affairs, which should be walled off so
that it is not contaminated by the black and gray propaganda of psyops or information
operations. This is fairly easy to work out on an organizational chart in headquarters,
tougher to execute in the field.

Sun Tzu told us
2,500 years ago: All war is based on deception. It is a valued principle
tested by time and experience. A corollary to the principle says, however, that American
soldiers do not seek to deceive the enemy by lying to their own people, their fellow
soldiers, and their allies.

Richard Halloran
Honolulu, Hawaii
(Editors note: Richard Halloran is a former military correspondent with The New
York Times and teaches an elective course on the press and security at the Asia
Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.)

The Author
Replies:

I never suggested
that the military lie to the media. My article urges the military to work toward improving
relations with the media because we both share important common objectives with the
American people. Obviously, lying would be discovered and would work against such
improvements to the detriment of the American public that both institutions serve
faithfully.

In a 24/7 global
news environment, the media cannot avoid some role in deception plans. Deception plans are
part of warfare. If the press reports on troop formations and exercises that are part of a
deception plan, they are no more being

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duped than those who
report live sports. Would anyone label a football coach as a liar because his team lines
up to kick an extra point and instead passes the ball for a two-point conversion? Are
American football players being asked to lie because they play a role in such a deception?

Psychological
operations (PSYOPS) are not strictly about lying, either. The media can choose to report
information provided by the military or not. For example, demonstrations of overwhelming
power and superiority are not lies. Asking the media to report this, and then doing it, is
not a lie. Yet, these operations can be decisive, as they were in the Persian Gulf and in
Haiti. Moreover, PSYOPS may save lives on both sides in a future conflict with Saddam
Husseins regime.

Regrettably, Mr.
Halloran has distorted my words to raise the specter of the dysfunctional Vietnam-era
relationship between the military and the media. Accusing me of suggesting that American
commanders and soldiers should lie is precisely the type of hot-button rhetoric that
serves to widen the gap between the media and the military. My article chronicles the
lessons since the advent of television that the military must learn and makes the case
that we should try to understand one another better. So, lets try to do that.
Were on the same team.

Lieutenant Colonel
Margaret Belknap

FAITH IN
TECHNOLOGY

To the Editor:

In Colonel John
Gentrys article Doomed to Fail:
Americas Blind Faith in Military Technology (Parameters, Winter
2002-2003), much of his criticism regarding the emphasis now being given to technology
seems to be based on its limitations in fighting guerrillas. Such criticism ignores the
fact that the preponderance of US military force structure is devoted to winning
conventional conflict. Moreover, by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of
conventionally oriented forces, technology should make it possible to devote more
resources to threats created by guerrillas.

But my main concern
is his recommendation that the United States should abandon the notion that military
objectives may be won or made easy and costless through the use of technology. To
begin with, it appears that he uses the word costless rather than the phrase
far less costly in terms of US lives in an effort to make the notion seem as
extreme as possible. In any case, his endnote 46 makes it clear that he assumes those who
believe in this flawed notion on the value of technology, especially when it
is in the form of airpower, are primarily airmen and the Department of the Air Force as a
whole.

It may surprise him,
but soldiers who have been on the receiving end of US air attacks also believe that
technology in the form of airpower changes the fundamental nature of military conflict.
These soldiers seem to have a far more realistic appreciation of how much technology in
the form of airpower is changing warfare than some American soldiers and marines. One of
these soldiers on the receiving end was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Seeing the impact of
Allied airpower in North Africa, he wrote, Anyone who has to fight, even with the
most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage
against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of
success. In

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Normandy he wrote,
During the day, fighting troops and headquarters alike are forced to seek cover in
wooded and close country in order to escape the continual pounding from the air.

Today, almost 60
years after Rommel made his observations, technology has made this pounding from the
air much more precise and far less limited by darkness and bad weather, as Taliban
and al Qaeda forces recently discovered. It is a fact that, thanks to developments in
technology, the effectiveness of American airpower against land forces is increasing at a
dramatic rate. For example, not only do developments in technology now allow enemy
vehicles moving within a large area to be
reliably detected and accurately located, but also precisely targeted, even in darkness
and bad weather. These developments should make it possible for the United States to
defeat opposing land forces with even fewer and lighter land forces than have been
required in the past.

Unfortunately, in
Operation Enduring Freedom it seems that key American soldiers (and perhaps even some
airmen) were surprised by airpowers increased effectiveness against fielded land
forces and thus were not prepared to exploit its successes with an energetic pursuit
(using precision air attacks closely coordinated with the maneuver of SOF and airmobile
forces). It is quite possible that had such a pursuit been made it would have resulted in
the death or capture of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, preventing them from escaping to
fight again in Anaconda.

Lieutenant Colonel
Price T. Bingham, USAF Ret.
Melbourne, Florida

The Author
Replies:

The Defense
Department suffers from technophilia in pursuit of victory in a narrow range
of Goldilocks wars that are not too hot, not too unconventional, but just
rightmedium-intensity conventional conflicts against weak opponents. Technology
enables risk-averse warriors to attack enemies who cannot effectively shoot
back. To some degree, this is good; fair fights are bloody and often
inconclusive. But from Douhet, airpower partisans have extolled real and imagined virtues
of military aviation. Rommels debacle in the desert is one of many bureaucratically
useful but not universally applicable anecdotes.

The US
militarys technical infrastructure tightly controls the scope and conduct of
operations. But the range of recurrent missions demands capabilities far broader than
accurately delivering munitions in Goldilocks wars. Technology did not help much in
Vietnam, Beirut, Mogadishu, Haiti, or Bosnia. It did not defeat the Yugoslav military in
1999. The assessment of operations in Afghanistan by the Army War Colleges Stephen
Biddle indicates yet another middling performancenot a triumph of technology.

The most insidious
pathologies of technophilia are cognitive and moral. When stand-off weapons seem to work,
we want more of them; we want to fight the last campaign again, not use efficiency gains
to fund other programs. When winning with technology is safe and easy, we avoid dangerous
and time-consuming jobs, even if civilians and mission accomplishment suffer. When enemies
refuse to stand and die by precision munitions, we call them asymmetric
threats and continue comfortable conventional programs that assure that our
asymmetric vulnerabilities remain. When operations do not go as planned, we dismiss them
as anomalies.

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Airpower is the most
obvious example of this syndrome, but technophilia is pandemic in all services and most
military functions. Intelligence may be afflicted worst. When intelligence is reduced to
ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), we rely on sensors,
communications pipes, and computers that provide narrow pictures of physical things and
discrete events; but we lack historical and political contexts essential to good
decisionmaking. We denigrate human intelligence and analytical skills because, implicitly,
technology will think for us. When we fail to anticipate implied tasks, we blame
mission creep, not bad analysis. The departments new
task-post-process-use (TPPU) paradigm for intelligence makes explicit the notion that
large volumes of data on the web alone will improve operational performance. Because it
purposefully ignores the ways people process information, this doctrine of immaculate
perception is a step backward.

Well-conceived
technology, including airpower, can dramatically improve the performance of military
forces. Unfortunately, dependence on fragile technologies, further constrained by culture
and doctrine, limits our operational sophistication and effectiveness. Moreover, the
technically dependent operational paths the US military follows are obvious.
Potential enemies can predict, avoid, and, with planning, defeat them.

Debate will not
resolve this issue. Given its importance to national security, the department should for
the first time objectively assess the operational strengths, limitations, and
vulnerabilities of US military technology, then adjust doctrine accordingly. Relying on
engineers promises and partisans faith is a formula for disaster.